Part A - Feantsa - Horus

Part B _ Evaluation
217
‘official tenant’, which ensures the payment of rent and the housing quality, and the
practicalities of letting are transferred from the landlord to the SRA without any risk.
SRAs choose the tenant, deal with any paperwork (including providing descriptions
of the dwelling and registering the contract), organise collection of the rent, arrange
fire insurance and organise repairs and maintenance. In exchange for agreeing to
a ‘lower’ rent, the landlord’s revenue is guaranteed.
Each SRA rents dwellings in order to sublet them, thereby focusing on vulnerable
households and individuals in the housing market. Singles and families with low
incomes are prioritised. The SRA helps the subtenant since tenant support is at the
heart of its mission, and if necessary creates links to other welfare organisations for
help in other areas, such as in the case of addiction or for administering paperwork.
The SRAs were originally founded by welfare agencies in order to ‘socialise’ the
quasi-unregulated private rental market (De Decker, 2001), but this ideological strand
later diminished into a more pragmatic position. As a consequence, alongside private
non-governmental services, public welfare services (OCMW) also started to organise
SRAs. At the end of 2007 fifty recognised and/or subsidised SRAs were renting out
4,368 dwellings. Although the number of SRAs has risen continuously since their
introduction in 1970, not all municipalities have been served ; at the end of 2006 SRAs
had dwellings on the market in only 67.5 per cent of Flemish municipalities (Vlaams
Overlegbewonersbelangen, 2007 and 2008). 3
Although SRAs operate on the private rental market, the interests of those landlords
considering working with an SRA had never been researched. As a consequence
little was known about the relationship between SRAs and private landlords.
Already in 1988 Neirinckx called for research to determine what the considerations
are for landlords working with SRAs, but it was nearly twenty years before the
Flemish housing minister ordered research on the profile of landlords working with
SRAs. The research would also examine how the landlords and SRAs became
acquainted and the experience of landlords who have worked with SRAs. In considering
whether the SRAs have been validated, this paper looks at the tasks of SRAs,
before turning to some of the results of the aforementioned research (De Decker et
al., 2009b) and debating the future of SRAs.
Current Legislation
According to the current Flemish governmental decision on the recognition and
subsidising of SRAs (Governmental decision of 16 March 2004), the tasks of an SRA
are (Silkens, 2006) :
3 For the historical context of the rise of SRAs, see De Decker (2002).